Rusted Heroes Read online

  “Any particular reason?”

  “Just don’t.” They have Jelena around still. She’ll keep Demaine Confections going.

  “Didn’t jump for joy over your choice to become a contractor?”

  “They weren’t exactly over the moon about it, no.”

  “And after school?”

  “I was in Cadets at Calloway’s. Upon graduation, I could take my pick of Rammelstaad’s military branches entering as a page. Passed over by the infantry, I was taken on by a contractor tank squad.”

  “Passed over because of your heritage, you think?”

  “Possibly.” Likely. “But I was fine with how it worked out; the tank squad was what I wanted anyway.”

  “Why? What drew you to tanks?”

  She liked this memory. “The Contractors’ Parade came through Raleen. I think I was around four or so. I sat on my father’s shoulders, watching the squads marching past. Up rolled a tank; the side was open, and a woman was piloting the thing. She waved at me, and I waved back. I was stunned. I didn’t know that was allowed, women captains. And from that moment on . . .”

  “Got a peek at your future and wouldn’t have it any other way.” He smiled.

  “I suppose, yes.”

  “The squad you joined, it was with the same tank you own today?”

  “The same.”

  “It’s been quite a constant in your life.”

  “Joan’s been a steadfast thing for me, absolutely.” Anoushka could’ve said more, wanted to, but kept mum. Easy, seeing how a record was being committed in ink before her.

  “Was she always Joan?”

  “Upon promotion to captain, I could choose to rename the tank if I wanted.” She thought about how Joan—formerly Lady Kaboom—became hers. The city of Wheeling was falling under orc control, and her captain at the time had taken the contract to help liberate it. Anoushka and Kylie-Nae were the sole survivors of the city reclaiming. After, Lady Kaboom’s pink slip was deposited unceremoniously into Anoushka’s bandaged hand. “Bad Reputation” had been playing in the recovery tent.

  Ruprecht nodded, noted. “Like the demon ditties, do we?”

  “I do, very much.”

  “As do I. Tell me, when did you lose your maidenhead?”

  She choked on her smoke. “Excuse me?”

  “Maidenhead.” The pen nib hovered over the page. “As in, when did you lose yours?”

  Anoushka tapped her pipe out on the windowsill. “I don’t see how this is relevant.”

  “It is to me.”

  “Why? I thought I wasn’t the protagonist this time.”

  “As author, I should know it. Backstory.”

  “Fine. I was fifteen.”

  “Fifteen.” Ruprecht scribbled. “Okay, and by whom was this joyous deflowering attended?”

  “Some boy from up the street.” Unsure fumbling. Far too much kissing, practically suffocating her. Her lips were sore before anything else had happened. Then, when it did, she forgot about her lips’ rawness. Lifelong lovers, if things had been different. If she’d been of a House, for example.

  “Some boy from up the street? Must’ve made some impression.”

  Aeswainn Ealifrae had, in fact. Or Tsar Ealifrae, as he was more known now. Anoushka nodded. “Yep. Next topic.”

  “All right,” Ruprecht said. “How many kills?”

  Authors: sex and violence, violence and sex. “Hard to say. Joan doesn’t exactly leave targets in an easy-to-tally condition.”

  “No, yours. I have the squad’s collective battle history but not your stats.”

  “Fifty-three,” she said.

  Ruprecht looked at her over his eyeglasses while Anoushka repacked her pipe, thumbing down the shredded moss.

  “It’s fifty-three,” she said again.

  “Quite cavalier, don’t you think? Those were lives you took.”

  “Orc lives. And as the Ma’am said in her most recent address”—she gestured over at Ruprecht’s gilt-trimmed radio—“we’re not to allow the green scourge any quarter in our hearts.”

  “While that may be true—”

  “Hold it. You’re not one of those who think the war with Skivvit is a civil one, are you? Who goes around crying we’re having a ‘misunderstanding’ with our easterly neighbors?”

  “A serious thing, suggesting someone’s a sympathizer.”

  “I’m aware.”

  Ruprecht groaned. “As foolish as I feel having to say this, I am not, nor have I ever been, a sympathizer of War King Haine Skivvit. Satisfied? Moreover, no, I don’t think it’s a civil war. I think it’s senseless, like all wars. I’m a pacifist.”

  “A pacifist who takes people’s money for stories that nakedly idealize war? Or am I missing something?”

  “I haven’t any say over people’s tastes,” Ruprecht said. “I merely deliver to them, as does any artist who wishes to still eat on occasion.”

  “And that applies to the bounties you receive for your protagonists to go stave in the heads of whomever the Ma’am doesn’t fancy?”

  “Yes,” the bard huffed, “it does. You, too, accepted blood money once.”

  “True, but never was there any colander to pass it through so it could get its share.” When he tried to interrupt, she raised her volume. “Let’s go back a moment. You called this war with Skivvit senseless.”

  “I did.”

  “So, following that line, do you think protecting Rammelstaad is a fool’s errand? That we should simply leave the door open for the orcs to mosey on in and do to us what they please?” The interviewee becomes the interviewer.

  “That’s not what I said. And you’re in no position to be wagging fingers; if you were so adamant about fighting for Rammelstaad, I’d be inclined to ask how you’ve been spending the last few years.”

  He was turning pink, she noticed. Let’s shoot for red. “You said you like stories. So, I assume you’ve heard about the Contributions, right?”

  “Sure, of course. Grade school stuff. Dwarves discovered smelting, the hammer. Humans: the sword and shield, the boat. Elves: the bow and arrow, medicine. Halflings: cheese and mead.”

  “Well, the orcs’ Contribution was rape, slavery, and torture,” Anoushka said. “Ask me, any supplier of things—their founding or regular practice—doesn’t deserve a lick of mercy.”

  “I hope you know those are only stories. Surely rape, torture, and slavery were around far before we met the orcs. And what of elves dreaming up the application of poison to arrowheads? Or humans with our gunpowder? We’re not all inventors with strictly bettering the world in mind.”

  “Point, but I do know no one holds slippery shows but the greenies.”

  “Slippery shows?” The bard’s acerbic tone faded. “What’re slippery shows?”

  “Don’t know that one? Oh, it’s a lovely time. Care to hear?”

  He seemed unsure but still nodded.

  “After they wrangle up a few strays—men, women, dwarves, humans, elves, they don’t discriminate—those still alive in the morning are dropped into a shaft, like an old well. Two-for-one drink deals are common, specifically in Silt, where you can get tickets to the show and your lunch half off.”

  “Some civility to them, then,” was Ruprecht’s observation. “Discounts. Money for goods and services. They were once astounding architects and scholars, according to the myths, before some disease knocked them back to the savages they are now. Parasites, it’s modernly speculated. One can’t help but pity them.”

  Care to recant your previous statement about not being a sympathizer? “Gut bugs or no, rest assured, they’ve certainly retained some of their inventiveness, absolutely.”

  “Please,” he said, rolling his hand, bowing slightly in his chair, “do continue. Enlighten me to the orc’s irredeemable ways; these alleged inventors of rape and torture.”

  “After being skinned alive,” Anoushka began and let that hang just to see the bard’s expression shift, “their captives are ordered to cli
mb out of the pit. Side note: You wouldn’t think someone could survive that, being skinned, but you’d be surprised. Done well, one’s flesh can be peeled entirely free like a wet sock. Anyway, the ladder, their goal, has sword blades in place of rungs. And all the while, screaming lipless and unable to close their eyes, they’re pelted from above with crushed, bleeding citruses and handfuls of crag salt. First out, the ‘winner’ gets beheaded then and there. This isn’t even true torture, either. This is fun to the orc. Boring to the younger ones. They’ll balk at the invitation to attend. Like you or I when Gran asks us over for watery tea and croquet.”

  The bard’s face wasn’t red anymore; it’d drained. “So . . . You feel nothing?”

  The question had been formed before the story about the standard slippery show, but Anoushka was still happy to provide an answer.

  “I wouldn’t say nothing. I feel pride in having put down each of those fifty-three. Most with a gun, two with a knife.” She drew it from her boot—short but with a cruel hooked tip. “What got us out of there before we became the next contestants.”

  Ruprecht smoothed back his silvery hair. “I’d never heard about the . . . the slippery show.”

  Watching the bard try to quickly forget what he’d heard and what images he’d cobbled together in his imagination, Anoushka felt a different thrill rise in her heart. I can spin stories too.

  Breaking the Law

  They couldn’t see Breakshale’s towers from their camp in the foothills, but they still felt watched.

  Hunger gnawed at Anoushka. With only coffee in abundance—at least the grifting grocer wasn’t entirely heartless—Anoushka answered her stomach’s growls by setting the kettle near the fire again.

  Kylie-Nae, returning from a pee, jangled back near the fire, buckling her gun belt—the holsters of which were all but empty. One six-gun to Russell, and the mammoth-killing pistol to Anoushka. It was heavy in Anoushka’s hands, heavier than her old flintlock she used carry. It felt as if she was dragging a smithy’s block fastened to her hip. The fire’s light played over the seventeen-inch brushed-nickel barrel. Anoushka snapped it open. Still loaded. Again. Six bullets. Six. Six. And six, still.

  “They’re not going to poof away when you’re not looking,” Kylie-Nae teased. “You’ll know when they’ve been loosed. For a week.”

  On foot, they wouldn’t be able to pack their ears with cotton like they did in the tank; they needed to hear at all times. And in just her regular clothes, Anoushka really missed Joan—she felt invincible during a scuffle. Perhaps a dangerously false thing, but it’d still take short of a ten-pound mortar shell to peel her galvanized skin—unlike Anoushka’s jacket, which wouldn’t discourage even a small-caliber round from passing through.

  “Shame about dragons,” Kylie-Nae said. “I would’ve liked to’ve been around for that.” Anoushka suspected she was just making small talk to distract—which didn’t go unappreciated. “I mean, it’s sad, a lot of them were like a billion years old.”

  Towers over ten stories were colloquially called wyrm defiances. Before the Great Snuffing, no building any higher could have its mortar dry before it came down. Maybe the wyrms were trying to prevent us from exceeding ourselves, from going too far, Anoushka considered. Burning to keep measure.

  Their fire was already burning high, but Anoushka tossed on another split log to busy her hands.

  With a mug dribbling foam, Russell tottered over. “I will say I’m already missin’ the Crescentcliff climate. Colder than a snow elf’s . . . arse. Forgive me, Annie, I misplace meself sometimes.”

  Anoushka waved him off. “Forget it.”

  “Ye all right?” the dwarf grunted, sat. “Look in need of a drink.”

  She raised her coffee cup, gave it a shake. Though ale had calories—and her stomach felt like it was trying to eat itself—she wanted to be clear.

  Plan was to head up after dark. The suns were setting too fast; her mounting jitters could be measured by the horizon-eating red Aurorin and blue Teanna.

  Beside her, Russell opened what Anoushka at first took to be a cigarette case. When he turned it to the fire to see, she noticed three photos wedged inside. Tara, a bawdy but lovely lady, and Russell’s two sons, Ed and Alan. Both handsome, like their father. As she watched Russell stroke each photo, even Tara’s black-and-white unsmiling image, Anoushka wanted to ask about what had caused Russell and Tara to split—they’d seemed so in love—but thought better. Let him go about his ritual. If he was still able to glean strength from a photo of a woman he was no longer married to, why meddle?

  The door to Ruprecht’s caravan slammed open. Lodi came grumbling over to the campfire, started to sit, but apparently decided she was too angry still and paced about, cursing.

  “What now?” Kylie-Nae groaned.

  Lodi and Ruprecht had fought the whole trip up the Leslies. Not about any one subject either. Where best to camp, where to get the explosives for the prison gates, on and on. One gem: Lodi said they absolutely needed to buy their meat already well dead—that they couldn’t bring animals to slaughter on the road, which was customary, because any fresh kill could be a window for Lyle Eichelberger. But I like fresh bacon was Ruprecht’s argument. And off they’d go again.

  Once she had finally sat, the wizardess rummaged in her satchel and pulled the leather sleeve from over her shadowpane. The oblong plain of darkly tinted glass gave no true reflection, only a hazy attempt at showing its viewer, ghostly. After downing a vial of something yellow, Lodi, with eyes bugging so wide they threatened to plop onto the mirror, stared into the black glass. Anoushka kept the wizardess in her peripheral, as curious as she was afraid. After several minutes, as if she’d received an electric shock, Lodi disconnected with a rasping intake of breath, making everyone jump.

  “Now’s our chance,” she choked. “Guard shift change, right now.”

  Apparently having caught that from inside his caravan, Ruprecht thrust Markus out onto the dirt. “Gather yourself, boy, and get going.” A bag spilling pens and ink bottles crashed onto Markus’s back. And knocking him to his belly again, a saddle. “Details, boy. Use your adverbs.”

  “Do you know how to ride?” Anoushka asked, helping Markus up.

  Markus pulled away and went to the front of the caravan, unhooking one of the nags. “Yes,” he said and sniffled.

  “Are you okay, Markus?”

  “Fine. Thank you.” He struggled to hoist the saddle.

  Anoushka stepped to the caravan’s window. By the light of his stove, Ruprecht’s shadow was being thrown onto the far interior wall. “I thought bards liked to see tales as they were being made.”

  “I trust my assistant’s observational skills just fine, Miss Demaine, thank you.” Ruprecht snapped the shutters closed. “Safe travels.”

  Anoushka turned back to the others, already saddled on the remaining donkeys. Kylie-Nae and Russell shared a saddle to allow Anoushka one for herself. While they fed their weapons bullets, Anoushka noticed Lodi and Markus were coming unarmed.

  “Stay behind us,” Anoushka said.

  Lodi raised her driftwood cane across her lap like it was something as lethal as a carbine. “Don’t treat me like a tagalong, dear.” She turned to Markus. “No offense.”

  “By your word, Cap’n,” Russell said behind Kylie-Nae on the same saddle.

  Once on her own donkey, Anoushka turned it around and checked—yet again—that the mammoth-killer was loaded. “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  One slip and it’d be a long tumble down the black mountainside.

  Lodi came picking along the narrow stony path behind Anoushka. “It’s funny. People feel safe with the worst of Rammelstaad shoved away up here, but little do they know the worst ones are still running free—some declaring who should be filed off to Breakshale.”

  “Quiet,” Anoushka hissed over her shoulder. They weren’t near the gates yet, but even so . . .

  “Oh, did I offend you? Family in politics, have we?”r />
  “No, but be quiet.”

  “Here I thought elves were rebellious types. I mean, that was the main impetus for that kerfuffle back in the Sixth Age if I remember right. Didn’t care much for King Samuel’s want of making the continent unified in total. But then you cool kids wanted to keep your backs to the far corner, happily self-removed to brood and lurk. So where’s your rebellious streak, huh?”

  “Just because somebody of one race does something doesn’t mean they all do. You’re human, so does that mean you—?”

  Bringing her donkey alongside Anoushka’s, Lodi chuckled. “I’m sorry, what was that?”

  “Quiet, Lodi. Please.”

  “No, tell me, I’m human so do I what, exactly? Oh, right. There are no negative epithets for humans. Oh, there’s slurs for days for north-born elves—snow peas, snowballs, flakey-flakes, snowies—there still isn’t a single one for humans.” The wizardess was leaning so far over in her saddle, she was nearly joining Anoushka on hers. “Doesn’t that just chap your ass?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Sure. But back to my point: you like how things are run? Have a framed picture of the old twat’s bulldog mug over your mantel? Same you give a curtsey to each night before bed?”

  “If joining you in bad-mouthing politicians and royals will end this, no, I don’t like how the Ma’am runs things. But even if we knock down all the palaces’ walls across Rammelstaad and start as an entirely free people, eventually, given enough time, someone will name themselves the boss—and they, like every other, will eventually decide they deserve a bigger piece, and round and round we go again. Satisfied?”

  “So, in your estimation, given a long enough measure, the creep of corruption for anyone in power is inevitable?”

  “Not everyone. But I think you have to be kind of wrong in the head to think yourself leader material in the first place.”

  “You’re a leader, of sorts. That that mean you’re wrong in the head? Because you just said—”

  “For the gods’ sake, if I get shot because of your jabbering, Lodi, I’ll be fit to be tied. Shut up. I won’t say it again.”